Human Events: "Abortion By Any Other Name Is In Health Care Bill"

(Hat tip: PewSitter.com)

From Human Events:

Obama may be caught in a lie -- a lie to the pope, no less.

Obama told the pope in a visit last week that he was committed to reducing the number of abortions. Yet his administration is helping Democrats craft a health care bill that one House Republican says amounts to the Freedom of Choice Act on stealth.

Under the current draft in the House, the bill’s health care coverage requirements for every individual -- set by the administration and known as minimum benefit standards -- don’t specifically mention abortion.

It sounds harmless, and it’s meant to.

But history's "most open and transparent" administration can effectively grant abortion “rights” by simply not mentioning the word.

House Republicans say precedent shows courts and administrative agencies assume abortion is included unless explicitly prohibited in the legislation. When Congress remains silent, it allows courts and agencies to, as Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) said in a statement, “mandate abortion.” It happened in the federal Medicaid statute, which required the famous Hyde Amendment to stop federal funding of abortions through Medicaid.

“Unless amended, …[the current] bill seeks to mandate abortion coverage for nearly every insurance plan in America,” Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) said Tuesday. “Every American will be forced to pay through these services, whether through premiums or tax rates.”

Basically, as Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) put it, if you pay premiums or taxes, you’ll be funding abortion. Smith also said the language of the bill as it stands would pre-empt state laws (such as parental notification).

So Obama plans to reduce the number of abortions by making them cheaper, more accessible, and penalizing insurance companies and employers that choose not to include the procedure in their health care coverage. Under the current draft of the bill, if individuals decide they want something other than the minimum benefit standards set by the administration, they have to pay a 2% fee. Employers pay an 8% fee.

***
Obama thinks health care should be a right. He thinks reproductive care is basic care. And his Secretary of State, speaking for his administration’s foreign policy, says reproductive health includes access to abortion. Obama makes you connect the dots, but it’s clear his health care legislation essentially grants a right to an abortion.

Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), an OB-GYN for over 30 years, compared Obama’s bill to a play known as the end-around in football, set up to trick opposing defenses.

“It was sneaky, it was tricky, and it almost always worked -- it caught the defense totally off guard,” Gingrey said of the play’s success on his junior high football team. “That’s exactly what’s happening in this legislation.”

Later on, he said, “It’s really trying to pass the Freedom of Choice Act through this legislation.”

[More]

See also "The Silent FOCA: Vast Abortion Expansion Slowly Coming to Light".

My Comments:
The point is that abortion must be explicitly excluded from any government health care plan in order to ensure that the Hyde Amendment remains the law of the land (i.e. that federal tax dollars will not be expended to pay for abortions).


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Chris Matthews: Obama Double-Crosses Pope; Abortion Coverage Could Jeopardize Health Reform [UPDATED]